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- Path: sparky!uunet!usc!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!ee!bloc1469
- From: bloc1469@ee.ee.uwm.edu (Gregory R Block)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
- Subject: Re: CBM mention on 12/11/92 Computer Chronicles
- Date: 4 Jan 1993 02:59:41 GMT
- Organization: Electrical Engineering Dept. University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
- Lines: 75
- Message-ID: <1i896tINN224@uwm.edu>
- References: <1i0ed1INNn0r@uwm.edu> <1993Jan3.203855.6910@sol.ctr.columbia.edu>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: 129.89.2.33
-
- In article <1993Jan3.203855.6910@sol.ctr.columbia.edu> jerry@msi.com (Jerry Shekhel) writes:
- >The design purpose?! It's obvious: to provide support for modern
- >applications on a vast array of peripheral hardware. That's just one
-
- If that's the Windows philosophy, it explains exquisitely why Windows
- is so incredibly fubar.
-
- >sentence, but it implies things like the GUI, VM, and DIG. Do you feel
- >that this philosophy is less valid than the one behind AmigaOS? Why?
-
- I will first say that THAT doesn't imply a GUI, VM, OR DIG. There's a
- lovely quote I've seen in Mike's sig: "Unix is the OS of the future,
- and always will be."
-
- MS-DOS provided support for modern applications, it just made them do
- all the work themselves.
-
- There's more to a philosophy to it than that. What I meant by
- philosophy is the "feel" one gets, the "understanding", the "basis"
- for the design of the OS. That is taken from not only the FEATURES of
- the OS in question, but the user and programmers interfaces.
-
- For instance, under the AmigaOS, there is a move towards taglists.
- Gadtools.library is nearly 100% taglist. Others are moving quickly.
- (GT may be 100% taglist, but I'm not about to count. I know that I
- don't think there's much left of anything that isn't). Operating
- system calls are "layered".
-
- One can see where Intuition.library is calling graphics.library to do
- the work for you, kid of a "wrapping" of multiple functions. Similar
- things exist for the new buffering calls in graphics.library, and its
- higher-level intuition.library counterpart.
-
- The amiga bases around a "filesystem" motif: Devices like serial and
- parallel ports are accessed similarly to console: windows and files.
- One can copy something from Ram: to SER:, type flubber.tex >PRT:, or
- do named pipes, all through the same filesystem motif. BTW: You'll
- note that Windows NT is EXTREMELY similar to this. EXTREMELY.
-
- As a result of this, one can simply "drop in" new filesystems, and
- have them work. Many people used FFS (the FastFileSystem) on floppies
- back in the 1.3 days.
-
- The Amiga is extremely elegant in most places. Some places that
- aren't? There's still BCPL visible. Not everything is documented as
- nicely as it should be. :) Anyways, dos.library and filesystem stuff
- is probably the last remnants of BCPL left in the Amiga, and they're
- working toward ridding that.
-
- Elegance. Professionalism. It oozes out of the AutoDocs, pal.
- There's a definite order, a definite hierarchy to the way things get
- done on the Amiga. It's very clean, it's very concise, it's very
- understandable. If you'd like to see what a nice OS looks like, buy
- the Includes & Autodocs. They're getting better, too. There'll be a
- lot of happy people once 3.0's I&A are released.
-
- >I'd like to know where you got this information. Has MS let you look over
- >the Windows source code? If not, how did you determine that it has a bad
- >internal architecture?
-
- Because it has a bad EXTERNAL architecture. The only thing I know
- about the layering of windows is what I know from the OS calls
- available. Isn't that enough?
-
- >You keep saying that Windows is badly designed, but you have no proof.
-
- Know what OS calls are? Try using them.
-
- Greg
-
- --
- (: (: (: (: Have you overdosed on smileys today? Why NOT!?! :) :) :) :)
- (: "Our father, who art in Iowa, Hollow be thy head, Thy ideas run :)
- (: Thy will be done, At Commodore as it is at Apple" -Dan Barrett :)
- (: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: (: () :) :) :) Wubba, the Dark Angel :)
-